Is Mastery By Robert Greene Worth Reading For Self-Improvement?

The Chimp Paradox by Dr. Steve Peters is another excellent book that combines psychology with real life examples of how to put a model into practice. Using the concept of the ‘stone of life’ I’ve recently started to prioritize what is important and this has changed my perception of stress. The chimp analogy may seem silly at first but it becomes very useful at recognizing when you are being hijacked by your emotions. I’m not perfect but being more aware of my emotions is better than not. If you are fed up of being controlled by your emotions then this book will give you some good insight into self.

There were 3 things that surprised me. 1) It was really funny for such a dark subject (‘Congratulations, your narcissism made you buy a book about narcissism’). 2) You don’t come to realize that the childhood wounds created the narcissistic traits. 3) The ‘are you a narcissist?’ quiz wasn’t another clickbait list. While my score did end up being somewhat high, the book immediately started to explain how labels don’t matter as much as change does. Replacing “I’m better than them” with “I’m different from them” can help you to switch from a competitive to a curious mindset. This seems simple but is very effective. Now I notice more often when I’m mentally ranking people and I immediately stop doing that. This is progress, not perfection!

As a book for and by various communities (in particular self-help) it transcends said group. Many academics have incorporated it into their teaching. Tech types read Pausch’s work here. People dealing with bereavement find inspiration in his take on legacy. Pausch’s work is highly applicable to the business world in terms of presentation and leadership. Yet, beneath all that is a fundamental exploration of human challenges to which there is no one solution. Yes, it is worth reading. Pausch’s work can create a myriad of interesting discussions between a professor and a student, a CEO and an employee, a patient and a therapist, and even a gamer and his/her peers. It can be a very powerful and cultural significant reference point for work in very different fields, effectively a unifying text in our present day fragmented world.

Onomatopoeia is one of the coolest underused villains out there, and his few appearances by Smith and Hester have been utterly terrifying. That storyline alone is worth the cost of the comic. I would not trust it on free online sites, as even the best of those tend to have their pages scrambled around and even left out entirely. Nothing is more frustrating than getting to the cliffhanger of a story only to be presented with a page of ads for a dating service instead of the next part of the story. But the suspenseful ‘Sounds of Violence’ is worth waiting for in print, even if it’s a few months down the line. Buy it, or go to your local library and wait for them to get it. It’ll be worth it.

Consider the hardware as well as the the physical design. The flush screen of the Kindle Paperwhite and the page-turn buttons on the Oasis and Scribe versions of Kindle reduce the potential for minor interruptions such as waiting for a slow touchscreen to register a tap or for a swipe action to complete. Smooth page turns allow for continued focus in reading and thus enable reading to continue in a natural reading rhythm for longer periods of time. Each stutter, mis-tap, and new grip position to reach the “next page” zone to turn the page is a tiny amount of cognitive load. But by good design of the hardware, this load is taken away from your brain to process the material that you’re reading. Therefore, investing in a higher-end Kindle model with the best buttons, to make sure they are responsive enough, is a tool to improve your reading efficiency. But in a way totally different from typical software feature announcements.

I finally got around to reading The Sister after seeing it EVERYWHERE on BookTok. Yeah, the hype for this one is confusing. It’s a fine book and all, but apparently it’s ‘revolutionizing’ a genre or something. As it is to me, The Sister is merely an above-average psychological suspense novel. I might have gotten more out of it had my expectations not been so obnoxiously high. Just manage yours, I guess.

'Mini Habits' by Stephen Guise is another great read that provides more insight into 'Kaizen' - in this book he describes how to bypass resistance by setting tiny goals, such as doing one push-up a day. I applied the tips from the book last year and as a result I read more books than ever before. 'Flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is another great read that provides more insight into 'Kaizen' - in this book he describes the psychology of the optimal experience, and describes how people can get into a state of flow while working on their mastery of a skill in small, gradual steps. So, two more great books on improvement, that make it less of a chore.

I can find humor in the novel too (it’s really dark and subtle though). First of all, there’s Marmeladov. His drunken and semi-self-pitying monologues are, of course, tragic, but also somehow funny. Then there are the petty and scatterbrained officials, Mme Liputin and the Landlady, and, most of all, the bombastic and comically-failed attempts by Luzhin to better himself socially or financially. It’s clear that the author is savaging the social climbers, the cynical and hypocritical members of the Russian bourgeoisie, and their functionaries. Raskolnikov’s delusions of grandeur also have elements of the pathetic and the absurd. This humor is not funny in the sense that the novel is not a comedy (it is not), but rather the recognition of the ridiculous in a tragic situation makes the novel more human and therefore less a stern lecture.

So often we get stuck in our conventional understanding of novels, seeing them only to entertain. Yet every novel is so very different from another, most of all from the epic fantasies like Mistborn and the contemporary novels like Normal People. Most of all I enjoy the problems that such novels throw at their characters and thus also at us readers in order to test their beliefs. Innovatively, many books also delve into aspects of our lives that perhaps we are yet to uncover or grapple with. Through novels we read, exploring a writer’s portrayal of love, of loss, of his/her search for identity, of human resilience – can most certainly offer insight, aid us in growing to a better understanding of ourselves, our current situation and the world in which we’re living. One sentence that resonates can stay in our minds for years to come. In summary, novels enable us to gain greater insight into our lives and more importantly, inspire our personal growth.

If you're into history books that read like epic sagas, 'Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World' is a total page-turner. Jack Weatherford doesn’t just dump facts on you—he paints this vivid, almost cinematic portrait of Genghis Khan as this brilliant, complex leader who reshaped the world in ways we still feel today. I picked it up expecting dry historical analysis, but it’s packed with wild anecdotes, like how the Mongols pioneered postal systems and religious tolerance centuries before Europe caught on. It’s one of those rare books that makes you rethink everything you learned in school about 'barbarian' conquerors. What really hooked me was how Weatherford ties Mongol innovations to modern life—everything from global trade networks to diplomatic immunity traces back to their empire. The writing’s super accessible, too; no stuffy academic jargon, just lively storytelling that makes 13th-century politics feel urgent. My only gripe? Some scholars argue it romanticizes Genghis Khan a tad, but honestly, after years of pop culture reducing him to a villain, I didn’t mind the rebalance. Finished it in three sittings and immediately loaned my copy to a friend—it’s that kind of book. Still catches me off guard when I spot Mongol influences in random places, like the origins of sleeve buttons on suits.